Reflections on My Academic Experience

Signed, sealed, and delivered. Today, I signed a contract with UTC as a tenure-track, assistant professor of religion. Like many young academics, it has been my dream to land a tenure-track appointment.

Lately, I have been reflecting on my journey up to this point. Below are the highlights:

• 1998-2001: Financial Consultant with A.G. Edwards in Fort Myers, Florida and Coral Gables, Florida

• Won the "Albert Gallatin Award" in 2000, reserved for the top financial consultant within the first two years of work experience. This award meant a lot to me since I started with no family money, networking leads, or any other asset base to build upon, and all my colleagues laughed when my boss introduced me at the first meeting as a future winner of this award. 
• I worked tediously each week on a prospecting list that I used to contact new retirees who had moved from up north. I sent these newly-planted Florida residents information on the local tax laws in a welcome basket, containing a coffee mug with my name on it, coffee, chocolate, and other goodies that was hand-delivered. I then contacted them to set up a time to meet. Most of my "cold" calls were in fact very warm leads.
• After winning the Albert Gallatin Award, however, I ended becoming disillusioned about the business because instead of being content making six figures as a twenty-two-year-old, I was urged to make even more money. I simply couldn't find the motivation to continue working at that pace in order to be able to buy a bigger house, more expensive cars, etc. I transferred offices to Coral Gables to get away from my manager and the hostile office in which I worked (true story: in order to motivate my co-workers, my manager used to take my production run to older colleagues in secret and ask if they were going to let a "kid" beat them again that month), but that didn't make things better and I was soon looking for a way to move back to Fort Myers. 
• Sadly, the family firm of A.G. Edwards that was founded in 1887 was bought out a few years later by Wachovia, which was then acquired by Wells Fargo.

• 2001-2004: Account Vice President with UBS Financial in Fort Myers, Florida
• I convinced myself that if I changed firms, perhaps I would enjoy working as a broker again. UBS Financial was in the process of completing its acquisition of the established firm of PaineWebber when I changed companies. 
• In many ways, this was a better move. The office was not hostile, and I liked my boss and coworkers. I partnered with a senior broker and the two of us managed over 100 million dollars in client assets. Shortly after my transfer of firms, we built a new home on a direct-access canal that was minutes from the Gulf of Mexico. I was driving a new Mercedes and my wife a BMW Z3. 
• In 2002, I earned the "Top Consultant" award.
• My son Nathan was born in 2003.

• 2004-2006: Graduate Student at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C., Canada

• Despite my apparent success, I was not happy as a financial consultant living in Florida. I began studying theology and soon wanted nothing more than to quit my job and go to graduate school. I did research on the best graduate schools in theology and came up with Regent College, which appealed to me because of its location in a beautiful city outside the U.S., and its renowned faculty members. Once my wife was on board, we sold our house (and everything else) and moved to Vancouver with our six-month old son, using our savings and the sale of our house to finance our time at Regent.
• Living so close to Whistler, I skied twenty times my first year as a graduate student.
• After earning a Master of Christian Studies in 2005, I was having so much fun that I convinced my wife to stay an additional year so that I could earn a ThM (Master of Theology), under the supervision of J. I. Packer.
• My second son Nicholas was born in 2005 (a dual citizen).

•  2006-2008: PhD Student at the University of Stirling, Scotland

• I did not originally intend to become a professor when I moved to Vancouver. When my wife and I made the decision to stay for a ThM at Regent College, I knew that I needed to figure out what my future career would be. During the process of working on my ThM, I came in contact with David Bebbington, who helped me flesh out some of the ideas that I had on my thesis. I ended up meeting him at Baylor University where he was teaching for a semester, and he invited me to study with him at Stirling. 
• This was a big decision for my family and I. It was one thing to move to Canada, and quite another to move across the Atlantic. My wife and I ultimately came to the conclusion that this was the right decision, and so we made the big move in October 2006.
• Scotland is an awesome place to work on a PhD. It is cold and rainy, perfect weather for studying. Although the weather is generally miserable, the Scottish people are very warm and typically like Americans. We made a number of friends, making it difficult to leave in 2008.

• 2008-2010: Adjunct Professor at Taylor University and Indiana Wesleyan University in Indiana

• By the end of 2008, we had blown through a lot of money in our savings to finance my graduate education at Regent College and my PhD studies at Scotland. Although one of the stocks that I had invested before leaving for Scotland--Apple Computer--did remarkably well and helped sustain us financially during our time in Scotland, we felt that it would be best if we returned to America where I would finish my research and writing for my dissertation. We relocated to Upland, Indiana because my wife and I had fond memories there as college students, and because we knew that it was an affordable area to live. 
• While living in Upland, I taught multiple survey courses in Old and New Testament and historical theology at Taylor and Indiana Wesleyan. This was a challenging time. I remember earning $16,000 one year teaching as an adjunct. Because my earnings were so low, my family and I qualified for government subsidies in food and health care. Instead of earning six figures, living in a new home on the water, and owning expensive foreign cars, I lived below the poverty line in a freezing cold rental house and drove a minivan.
• My youngest son Seth was born in 2009.

•  2010-2011: Assistant Professor at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia

• As many of you know, 2008 and 2009 were tough years to look for a job. After receiving multiple rejection letters and emails for the few open faculty positions advertised during that time, I was invited to interview for a history job at Liberty University, teaching undergraduate American history survey courses and graduate classes in European history. 
• Liberty seemed like a scary place to my wife and I at that time. I was not sure what to think of a school that was reputedly a haven for fundamentalism. But when I went to visit the campus, I felt less anxious. The faculty in the history department were incredibly friendly, and I was genuinely impressed at their education and scholarship. So I took the job.
• The irony of working as a resident faculty member at Liberty was that my biggest problem was with the teaching load, and not the people with whom I worked. Still to this day, I can hardly believe that I formerly taught four sections of Survey of American History I (up to 1865) with 120 students in each class (each class requiring a paper), and an additional graduate course in European history each semester. By my fourth class, my voice was absolutely parched, and I often felt exhausted. I began looking for another job.

• 2011-2013: Maclellan Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

•  By 2011, my first book, Enlightened Evangelicalism: The Life and Thought of John Erskine, had been published with Oxford University Press. My book wasn't a silver bullet, in terms of easily securing another job, but it did lead to a few interviews, including one with UTC. 
• I honestly don't know how I got the job at UTC, and so all I can say is that I am grateful. Not only was I hired to teach what I love (religious history and Christian thought), but I also live in a desirable city, and have congenial relationships with my colleagues. 
• As part of my job at UTC, I was asked to organize the LeRoy Martin Distinguished Lecture Series. I am proud of the incredible scholars who have been a part of this series so far.
• My second book with OUP was published in 2013: Early Evangelicalism: A Reader.

•  2013-?: Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
• I look forward to a long and fruitful career at UTC.

Conclusions
After reflecting on my journey, from graduate school to full-time work as a professor, here are some of the things that I have learned:

• Be willing to teach new courses
• When I first started adjunct teaching, I was only offered survey courses in the Old and New Testaments. At the time, I felt very uncomfortable with the idea of teaching introduction to the New Testament in particular. I'm glad, however, that I didn't turn down these opportunities. Surprisingly, I enjoyed teaching these survey courses, especially the New Testament. I learned a lot, worked out some of the kinks in my teaching, and was able to draw from the material in my lectures for later courses that I would facilitate. 
• Below are the courses that I have taught since 2008. It wasn't until the last few years that I was able to teach upper-level, specialized courses.
• Religion in the Age of Wesley, Whitefield, and Edwards
• Pivotal Moments in Christian History (Spring 2014)
• The Faiths of the Founding Fathers
• Jonathan Edwards's Life, Thought, and Legacy in American Religious Culture
• Contemporary Religious Issues
• Religion in Southern Culture
• Modern Christian Thought
• Religion in American Life
• Introduction to Western Religions
• Eighteenth-Century Europe
• Readings in Modern European History
• Survey of American History I
• History of Western Civilization
• History of the Baptists
• History of Fundamentalism
• History of Christianity I
• History of Christianity II
• Historic Christian Belief
• Survey of Church History
• Biblical Literature I: Introduction to the Old Testament
• Biblical Literature II: Introduction to the New Testament
• World Civilization
• Empire to Europe: Britain, 1915-1990
• People, Politics, and Empire: Britain, 1780-1914
• Continue to publish. 
• I love research and writing, but when you are teaching new courses each semester as a non-tenure track professor, often at several institutions, have a spouse and young children, and trying to stay sane, it is difficult to schedule regular blocks of time to do research. But I am glad that I did continually work on publishing, because this seems to have been the most important factor in why I made it to several interviews over the years.
• I don't think that publishing was the only determining factor that a search committee looked at when I was hired, but I do believe that it helped my candidacy. I am glad that I kept working on journal articles and book projects as a part of my weekly schedule, even if I felt tired from all the mercenary teaching that I did.
• Get lucky.
• Call it luck, fortunate, or providence, but there were unseen forces at work that got me where I am. Despite all the work that I had done to make myself a more attractive candidate, I still might not have landed an elusive tenure-track job.